


Found in Pieces

by HaroThar



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Evil Kuro, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapped Keith (Voltron), M/M, Minor Character Death, Modern AU, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, maladaptive coping mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 17:56:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28674828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HaroThar/pseuds/HaroThar
Summary: For three years, Shiro searched for his best friend, only to find him chained up in the basement of his twin brother's house. But now, when Keith looks at Shiro, he only sees Kuro instead.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 103





	Found in Pieces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KamiSamaNejiMaki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KamiSamaNejiMaki/gifts).



> Inspired by an [anon ask](https://whump-me-all-night-long.tumblr.com/post/635662285739868160/caretaker-is-whumpers-twin-and-whumpee-cant-help) on whumpmblr that my giftee for the Clear Day Fair exchange enjoyed. Beta'd by the lovely whumpthisway on tumblr <3

It had been a freak accident that had taken Kuro’s life, a texting driver and a red light. Shiro hadn’t been close to his twin since they were young, but even so, he felt his brother’s loss heavily. He wished he’d spent more time with the man, but the last three years he’d been consumed with his search, his frantic, desperate quest to find Keith, to figure out what had happened to his childhood friend, his dearest and most treasured companion. Now he was missing both the pillars of his youth, and he was alone with Kuro’s home, which he had to clear out. 

He set his brother’s keys on his brother’s kitchen counter and took in the space. It was a small house, which might have been a blessing, except Kuro had always been a master of real-life Tetris, and his belongings were multitudinous. Shiro sighed as he took it in. Where was he going to find the energy?

At least it was just the main floor and the basement. And the garage. Shiro pitied whoever would have to clear out his own garage, when he inevitably passed, though more likely than not they were just going to dump all his cork boards and red string directly into a dumpster. The mental stab at morbid humor ended up backfiring on Shiro, who found he couldn’t stand the thought of all the work he’d put into finding Keith… simply thrown away.

Shiro went down into his brother’s basement, wrinkling his nose at the smell. Was that… what was that? Did Kuro have some sort of pet that had up and died here due to neglect? Shiro would feel sorry for waiting a few days, if that were the case, but to his credit his twin had never mentioned any animals. 

He opened the door to what must’ve been the utility room and froze on the spot, his stomach dropping through the floor.

That wasn’t a dead pet, that was a human being. A naked man, chained to the ceiling, his legs raw and bloodied, kneeling in a mess of his own bodily fluids. The horror rooted Shiro in place, mute shock overriding his faculties. How—What—Why—

“Mas...ter,” the not-quite-dead body rasped, parched as a river in drought, _“please…”_

And broken as it was, Shiro still knew that voice, would’ve recognized it anywhere.

“Keith?”

\--

Keith refused to tell the doctors at the hospital anything, aside from the fact that he wanted to go home with Shiro. Well, he never said Shiro’s name, but he gestured towards him, and Shiro never left his side. 

Hours later, Keith said Shiro had found him chained up in the basement due to a “kink thing” but that couldn’t be right, Keith had been _missing_ for three years! But he refused to say anything else, so when he was cleared to leave, Shiro simply took him home, trying to convince Keith to speak, to tell him—anything. To explain, to tell him where he’d been all this time, to give Shiro _any_ information at all. But Keith was silent, his eyes downcast, offering no reaction aside from an occasional quiver in his lips.

\--

A month after Shiro had found Keith again, and he was still searching just as desperately for the man he’d lost three years ago.

\--

“Why are you _doing_ this to me?!” Keith shouted, slamming the knife he’d been using into the cutting board itself, a resounding crack filling the kitchen as the thing broke under the pressure. Shiro jumped, dropping the box of pasta and scattering rigatoni all over the floor. 

It was the first thing Keith had said since the hospital. _Months_ after moving in with Shiro. He’d gotten all of Kuro’s house in donation bags or the dumpster and sold the thing for cheap, just wanting to be rid of it and its bad memories. And the whole while, Keith had been silent.

“What?”

“I _know_ you’re not him!” Keith shouted, gripping the counter so hard all his knuckles were white, his face half-hidden by his hair but his scowl still plainly apparent. “I know, I fucking _know,_ okay? You’ve played this fucking game with me more times than I can count I _know_ you’re not Shiro so just _stop_ already! How long are you going to keep this round up?”

“Keith,” Shiro breathed, arm outstretched, an unfamiliar, but not entirely novel, horror creeping through him.

“Don’t call me that!” Keith snapped, head ducking and shoulders shaking. “Don’t call me by my name with his voice…” he added, quieter, tremulously.

Then, like he’d had his strings cut, Keith collapsed onto the kitchen floor, kneeling with his face in his palms, whole body shaking. Shiro rushed forward and knelt next to him, his hand coming to rest uncertainly on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, master,” Keith whined quietly, a hiccup tailing at the end. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry sir, please punish me, I’m sorry.”

“Keith—no. No, no, I’m not, I’m not going to hurt you!” Shiro gently pulled one of Keith’s hands from his face and replaced it with his own, cradling Keith’s cheek and turning his head to face him.

Shiro knew Keith didn’t like eye contact—never had, all his life—and so he didn’t try to force it, but he needed Keith to look at _him,_ not the monster Shiro had once called brother.

“Keith, it’s me. I don’t know what Kuro did to you, and you don’t ever have to tell me unless you’re ready and you want to, but I’m not him. I am _never_ going to hurt you, Keith, I promise.”

“This is cruel,” Keith hissed, tears in his eyes, hands gripping Shiro around the wrist.

“No, it’s true. Keith, whatever I have to do to prove to you that I’m not lying, I’ll do it, say the word.”

“I know better—” he choked on a quiet sob.

“It’s me. For real this time, and I’m not going anywhere.”

 _”Please,”_ Keith begged, his head dropping down to Shiro’s chest and Shiro pulled him into a loose hug, “please just hurt me again and be done with it. I can—I can do better this time, I swear.”

“No,” Shiro said, all but growled, and Keith’s precious body flinched in his arms. “Never, Keith, nothing is ever going to hurt you again. Nobody is ever going to touch you.”

Keith wept in his arms, and Shiro simply clung to the smaller form in his hold, useless, knowing that Keith didn’t believe him.

\--

When Keith, two weeks later, decided to push “Kuro” past his limit, Shiro nearly cried from relief. Shiro’s gentle suggestions and “would you please”s were met with stubborn, angry “no”s and a withering glare, Keith scared and hackles raised but trying to bury his fear beneath fury. Shiro simply beamed. Keith broke mugs and plates while looking right at Shiro, and Shiro only patiently, probably-too-happily asked him to clean it up, and write mugs or plates on the grocery list. When Keith stormed into Shiro’s bedroom one night, naked and angry, Shiro swallowed his panic and firmly asked Keith to put pants on.

Keith didn’t want to talk, after he was clothed, but he did adamantly refuse to leave Shiro’s bed, and for the first night in three and a half years, Shiro fell asleep to the ever-familiar scent of the only person he’d ever called his soulmate. 

Keith stuck around in Shiro’s bed every night after that, sometimes clearly wondering when Shiro would take advantage. Shiro sometimes wondered if he should have set up harder boundaries between them, if he shouldn’t have caved so easily to Keith’s obviously maladaptive coping mechanisms. But then Keith would slam a door or sit by a window staring up at the stars or nudge his head in closer against the crook of Shiro’s neck and Shiro would forget his misgivings. Any hesitance Shiro felt evaporated with the sigh of Keith’s breath against his chest, metal fingers sliding through raven hair.

Shiro knew he was being selfish. He knew what it made him, that he didn’t care. And it was Keith, his Keith, he’d never been any good at denying him touch, comfort, attention, even when he should have. So really, why should he expect to do better now?

\--

Keith was laying on his side, staring at him, tracing his fingers over the sleeve of Shiro’s nightshirt. Shiro stared back, eyes on the man he was slowly getting back, after years and after months. Keith’s eyes flicked up and, surprisingly, met his.

“He was jealous of you.”

Shiro arched an eyebrow and Keith resumed staring at his nose. Likely the scar over it.

“He knew everyone liked you better, on account of you not being a gigantic douchebag.”

Keith’s eyes got a far away look to them. 

“He hated that I loved you and not him. He hated that he couldn’t make me love him. He hated that you were smarter, and braver, and kinder. He wanted everything you ever had. But I think most of all he hated being called jealous, even though we both knew it was true.”

Keith scowled and clenched his fingers around Shiro’s sleeve. “Last time I called him jealous he snapped both my legs and choked me unconscious, then didn’t feed me for two weeks.”

Shiro’s eyes widened, a disgusted, protective fury rearing up inside him, but then Keith moved his hand from Shiro’s sleeve to his cheek. Shiro blinked, refocusing on the man before him.

“He would’ve been livid, even just for a moment, if I called him jealous to his face. He wouldn’t be able to hide it, not entirely. But you… didn’t even flinch.”

Shiro reached out as Keith’s eyes searched his face, and he caressed the burn scar on Keith’s cheek.

“Shiro?”

“Keith?”

“This is really you?”

Shiro’s heart splintered all over again.

“Yeah, baby, it’s me. I’m here, Keith, it’s really me, I promise.”

“Shiro,” Keith breathed. He shifted closer, then closer again. _”Shiro…”_

The high, vulnerable sound of Keith about to cry had Shiro instinctively wrapping him up in his arms, lips pressed thoughtlessly to Keith’s brow and soothing “shush”s past his lips before he was aware he was making the sound. Keith clung to him, grip so familiarly bruising Shiro felt relief shudder through him.

“Shiro!” Keith shouted, a raw, gasped cry. 

“I’m here, baby, oh Keith.” Shiro felt tears stinging at his own eyes, his own arms crushing Keith against him.

Keith sobbed, both their bodies shuddering with the violence of it, and wept, wept like he hadn’t ever before, not in all the years Shiro had known him.

“I’ve got you, I’m here, it’s me, you’re safe, you’re safe Keith, I’m here,” Shiro murmured over and over again, until the words stopped sounding like words at all and just became a litany of noise, wet and hiccupping and caught between them.

“Shiro, _you found me,”_ Keith gasped breathlessly, pulling back just enough to look up at Shiro’s face again.

Shiro felt everything in him capsizing in and finally coming to a rest as he cradled Keith’s face in his palms. “Yes,” he whispered with a wet laugh, smile shaking through him, “I got you back, Keith.”

\--

The garage hadn’t really been a destination for either of them, since Shiro had used it exclusively as storage for finding-Keith related objects, and well, Keith had been found. Keith hadn’t gone in because he wasn’t interested in the consequences of breaking “Kuro’s” rules.

But now that he finally, actually, genuinely believed that it was Shiro who had found him, that Shiro had _saved_ him, his natural curiosity and desire to explore was making a comeback. 

“Shiro?”

Shiro half-jogged to the garage, nothing in Keith's tone making him alarmed, but still eager, always eager, to go to Keith when he was called. A comet pulled ever into Keith's orbit. The destination was a surprise, and as he passed through the threshold he felt... faintly embarrassed, even though he had no reason to be.

"Keith?"

He was standing in the middle of the garage, a coat of dust over everything and floating particles catching in the sunlight creeping through the dirty windows. His back was quarter-turned to Shiro, eyes wide as he took in the walls. The photos, the printed articles, the transcriptions of overheard chatter stolen off a frankensteined "radio" and stuck on sticky notes around the walls. Anything Shiro thought might have been even slightly useful. Every scrap he could find. 

And Keith, in the center of it, found. 

Indigo eyes tuned and rooted Shiro to his spot, breath trapped in his lungs at his expression. 

"What is this?"

Shiro smiled wryly and rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. Again, he had no reason to feel embarrassed about this. But even so, the tips of his ears felt hot. 

"I was looking for you." He gestured to the walls, the scattered items, relics, on the floor. "I never stopped looking for you."

Keith turned back, and spun, and spun again, taking it all in (or failing to; it was, admittedly, a lot), before his eyes settled on Shiro again and Shiro saw tears budding. 

"Keith," he breathed, arms already outstretched, and in half a heartbeat they were filled with his heart. With his starlight, with his lantern, with his fire and best friend and better half of his soul. He buried his fingers and nose in Keith's hair, breathing in the scent of him, grounding and familiar and home. Keith's arms were too tight around him and Shiro couldn't care less. 

"I never stopped,” he repeated, quieter, a murmur against Keith’s hair. “I wouldn’t have ever stopped, not until I found you again.”

Keith’s chest hitched, but his bright boy didn’t cry, not exactly. Not quite this time. Shiro knew Keith didn’t like to cry. “I never gave up on you.”

When Keith surged up to kiss him, it surprised him as much as it didn’t. This was what they were always moving towards, wasn’t it? A lifetime of loving him as an acolyte loves their god, Shiro should have known by now.

He held Keith steady, kissed him back, and swore that this must be what starlight tastes like.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments/Concrit always welcome!


End file.
